Daily Archives: January 30, 2008

microsoft, software, windows

How to speed up Windows Vista: official and unofficial tips

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Microsoft has published an article on speeding up Vista, aimed at general users.

It’s not too bad. Here’s the summary:

  • Delete programs you never use
  • Limit how many programs load at startup
  • Defragment your hard drive
  • Clean up your hard disk
  • Run fewer programs at the same time
  • Turn off visual effects
  • Restart regularly
  • Add more memory
  • Check for viruses and spyware
  • Disable services you don’t need

Still, it’s a bit scattergun. I prefer a two-stage approach to improving performance (same applies to a single application):

  1. Find out what is slow
  2. Speed it up, or leave it out

For example, the benefits of adding memory tail off after a certain point. Task Manager will tell you to what extent RAM is slowing down Vista. Further, adding memory beyond 3GB is pretty much wasted on 32-bit Vista, since the system can only address 4GB, and the BIOS plus devices will use a lot of the 4th GB address space. That said, a system that is critically short of RAM (in other words, constantly swapping out memory to the hard drive) is in my opinion broken and unusable. Adding RAM in such cases delivers huge rewards.

Uninstalling programs gives little performance benefit if they are not running (unless disk space is limited). The aim is to reduce the number of running processes, not entries in the Start menu.

Vista defragments your drive regularly, by default. The benefits are often rather small, so it would be equally valid to suggest removing it from the schedule, or scheduling it to run less frequently.

The advice to restart regularly needs examination. Yes, a reboot can fix a sluggish machine. But it shouldn’t be necessary, and I recall that keeping Vista always-on was intended to be a benefit of the OS. Yes, here’s a quote from Power Management in Windows Vista [ppt]:

  • Windows Vista promotes the use of sleep as the default off state

In the right circumstances, Vista can run for ages without any problem. I’ve actually had Media Center (Vista Ultimate) run for several months without any issues; though this kind of thing is not very green so that’s another reason to do regular switch-offs. Still, to my mind “restart regularly” is a symptom of some problem that should be fixed.

Turning off visual effects is reasonable advice, though once again it may not yield much benefit. I tried it on my system and was surprised how little difference it made. Reason: I am running with Aero and a decent-ish graphics card, and hardware acceleration seems to handle the visual effects rather easily. Once again, if it’s not the thing slowing you down, then removing it won’t speed you up. You can test this quite simply, though it is tedious. Try it both ways. Did it make a difference? Measure it if possible.

It really is worth using the built-in tools, like Task Manager and the Reliability and Performance Monitor, to see which processes are grabbing lots of RAM and CPU. One of the good things about Vista is that such tools are easy to find. Click Start, type “reliability”, and click the link.

I’d also like to see mention of some favourite candidates for slowing down Vista:

1. Outlook 2007

2. The indexing service

3. Anti-virus software

4. Windows Defender

Hmmm, at least three of these are from Microsoft. Perhaps they are too embarrassing to mention.

Finally, I suspect disk performance is a big factor in real-world Vista speed. The reason is that many apps are very talkative when it comes to disk access. Here’s something to try. Go along to the Systernals site and download process monitor. This gives a good picture of what the actual processes on your Vista box are up to. Note how many events are occurring, how many of them involve file i/o, and which processes are responsible. You will also discover a large part of the reason why Outlook 2007 is so slow.

PS Another article, also just published, has good coverage of swap files and ReadyBoost.

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Living without the mouse – the content is the interface

I meant to link yesterday to John Lam’s post on living without the mouse.

I do so today because it fits nicely with Edward Tufte’s remark that (ideally) the content is the interface.

Lam’s point is that “toolbars just waste screen real estate”. Thus, he’s learned to operate as far as possible with keystrokes, not only because this is quicker (hand does not leave the keyboard), but also because it lets him remove on-screen furniture.

He writes primarily about Visual Studio, but also has a great tip for Office 2007 apps like Word and Excel. Press Ctrl-F1 to toggle the ribbon on or off. No ribbon means a lovely clean workspace.

apple, internet, microsoft, web authoring

Web usability has a long way to go

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First thing in the morning I often browse through recent blog posts and follow links that look interesting.

I noticed a free Windows 2008 book offer from Microsoft. Might be useful background for my review I thought – I’ll download it.

I lost count of how many slow, unresponsive pages I had to traverse before getting the book. Yes, I am persistent. I do recall having to sign in with Windows Passport (to the same account) twice – once to register for the book, and a second time for something called the E-Learning center, both times passing registration forms that I have seen many times before and do not intend to change. The final annoyance is that you cannot right-click and download the PDF; it is a Javascript link that opens in the browser. In my case I’ve set Adobe Reader to open outside the browser, which helps, but it is still an irritation.

It would not be so bad if this labyrinth of links were quick to navigate, but they are not. The problem in this case does not appear to be the download of large files (the PDF actually came down quickly once I got there), but rather slow server-side code resulting in web pages that seem to hang.

Next came an irony. Via Jimmy Guterman at O’Reilly I noticed a presentation by Edward Tufte on the Apple iPhone UI. Guterman warned that it was a large Quick Time file that would take “many minutes” to download. I clicked anyway. And waited. It was better than endless link-clicking, but still a poor user experience – no download thermometer, just a web page that seems completely unresponsive.

I agree with Guterman – the video is worth watching. Key points:

  • The content is the interface – remove “computer administrative debris” like buttons and toolbars.
  • Clutter is a failure of design
  • Add detail to clarify

Nevertheless, getting to the video is a lousy experience. The key here is that progress indicators transform the user’s perception of lengthy operations. I don’t just mean a spinning hourglass or the browser’s loading thermometer – we’ve learned that these are unreliable indicators, and that we may wait forever.